The Belvedere as a Classical Villa

72 JAMES S. ACKERMAN
that the fresco would seem to represent a purely imaginative project. The
villa is now obscured by a two-storey palace. At the centre of this palace,
where the fresco depicts a low exedra accessible by a stairway of circular
plan, there now rises the great three-storey "nicchione," with a triangular
stair at its base. Where we see a broad stairway leading to a lower, semidomed
exedra and a ramp, the court is now divided respectively by the high
library building and the lower Braccio Nuovo of the Museums. The lowest
level is the site of a large courtyard flanked on both left and right by four-tofive-storey
corridors and suites. The impression that the fresco is a fanciful
remodelling of the dreary enclosure is supported by the poetic ruins of the
western corridors, and the impossible lake in the foreground. But that such
a structure actually existed in the early sixteenth century, and that it is here
delineated with considerable accuracy is beyond question, and may be
demonstrated from documents of the time.
Vasari records as the first activity of Donato Bramante after the election
of Julius II in 1503, the systematization of "that area which was between
the Belvedere and the palace, which he wished to have in the form of a
rectangular teatro (!), enclosing a small valley which was between the ancient
papal palace and the building which Innocent VIII had newly made as a
papal habitation; and furthermore by two corridors in this valley, one might
pass from the Belvedere to the Palace along loggie; . . . and also from the
valley one might ascend to the level of the Belvedere by a system of stairways
of different sorts."1 Vasari continues to describe Bramante's project as comprising
two passages of two superimposed orders in the lower court, rising to
the ground level of Innocent's villa, carrying as a third storey a loggia 400
paces in length running the entire distance from the Vatican Palace to the
villa. In the lower court, the ground was to be levelled and a fountain erected
between the passages. Vasari proceeds: "Of this design Bramante finished
the first corridor which leads from the palace to the Belvedere on the side
toward Rome (to the right in the fresco), excepting the last loggia which was
to go on top; but the part toward the woods opposite (left in the fresco) was
well founded, but impossible to finish, as the death of Julius (1513) and then
of Bramante (1514) intervened." Vasari says that Bramante was also able to
complete the statue-court around the garden of the villa, but that the corridor
towards the woods was left undone until the time of Pius IV (1559-65). He
further adds that the inordinate speed demanded of the architect by the Pope
("che aveva voglia che tali fabbriche non se murassero, ma nascessero"),
resulted in faulty construction, and that a portion 8o braccia in length
crumbled in the time of Clement VII (1523-34), and had to be reconstructed
and buttressed under Paul III
Vasari's
(1534-49).
accuracy in this instance is fully attested by contemporary docu-
ments. That construction was begun immediately on the election of Julius II
is indicated by an inscription, now lost, which recorded the removal in I504
of the great basin from the baths of Titus to the site of the projected museum.2
1 Ed. Milanesi, IV, pp. 155 ff.
2 IULIUS II PONT. MAX. LABRUM. LAT. PED.
XXIII S. AB TITI VESPASIANI THERMIS IN CARINIS
TEMPORUM/ INIURIA CONFRACTUM IN VATI-
CANOS HORTOS ADVEXIT. PRIMAMQ. IN FORMAM
RESTITUIT ORNAVITQ. PONT. SUI AN. PRIMO MDIIII.
(V. Forcella, Iscrizione delle Chiese e d'altri
Edificii di Roma, VI, Rome, 1875, p. 55, ? 122.)